The Color of Air

by Gail Tsukiyama

  Razor was twenty when he began attending union meetings, just after his beloved dog, Laki, was found dead, and he was inconsolable. With no proof it was one of the plantation’s lunas who had killed his dog, Razor turned his anger toward organizing. He dragged Koji along in those early days, the meetings held in musty, abandoned cabins and dank basements that stank of rot and urine and mildew. Only a handful of Japanese workers showed up back then, nervous and unable to sit still, antsy and cautious, one ear always listening for sounds of the plantation police arriving to break up more than just their meetings. It wasn’t long after they’d begun to meet that Mariko had married Franklin, leaving Koji desolate. Through the years he’d always been careful to keep his feelings to himself, and if Franklin knew anything, he kept uncharacteristically silent. Koji stopped going to the meetings and threw all his energy into cutting cane, grateful it left him too tired to think of anything else. The following year, when Koji finally paused to take a breath, he’d become the fastest cane cutter on the island, while Razor had begun recruiting for the unions in the shadows. The more involved Razor became with organizing and recruiting, the farther apart they grew.

  * * *

  Koji was relieved to step into the fish market and out of the muggy heat, away from the crowded press of workers and the memories. He hoped for rain to bring relief. The high-ceilinged market was cool and filled with the hum of voices and laughter coming from the tables in the yard out back. Jelly was at the counter helping customers just as Samuel walked in from the yard and waved for him to join them. Instead, Koji pointed toward the kitchen, looking for Nori. Samuel nodded.

  Koji watched Nori from the doorway. She pulled a tray of sweetbread from the oven and poured a glass of guava juice, leaning against the counter and drinking. The air was warm and fragrant compared to the days of unpleasantness outside. As long as he had known Nori, she had taken care of everyone in the community. He’d always admired her strength, especially since her childhood was filled with neglect and loneliness. And though she’d never stepped foot off the island, she had more ambition than all three of the Okawa men put together. Koji rarely saw Nori standing still for very long. She was usually wearing one of Samuel’s old shirts and a pair of shorts, but she didn’t need fancy clothes to be a nice-looking woman.

  When he cleared his throat, Nori turned to him.

  “Sneaking up on me again, yeah.”

  “I let you know I was here,” he said, and smiled. He suppressed a cough, not wanting Nori to lecture him to take better care of himself.

  She shook her head and poured him a glass of guava juice.

  “Waiting for the train to be unloaded?”

  Koji nodded and drank down half the glass of juice in one swallow.

  “Saw Mama Natua the other day. Daniel gave her a quick checkup. Calm as can be with him,” Nori said, transferring the sweetbread onto a cutting board.

  “How is Mama?”

  Koji felt bad not seeing Mama more often. She was the one who watched out for Nori when she was young, and later kept a close eye on Franklin, one of the few people who hadn’t been taken in by Franklin’s charm. Still, it was too late; Mariko had already fallen under his spell.

  Nori shrugged. “According to Daniel, she’s doing fine physically, but she’s sinking deeper into her own world most of the time now.”

  “Mama has everyone’s love and support,” he said.

  “I know,” she said in a quiet voice.

  Mama’s loss of memory was upsetting to everyone in the community, but none more than Nori, who was devastated when Mama began to forget things. Just two years back, Koji found Mama standing on the train platform early one morning barefoot and in her nightgown. “Some folks coming to visit,” she told him, only she couldn’t remember who the visitors were. Koji stood with her as they waited for one train, and then another, to rumble by before he walked Mama slowly back home with the promise he’d bring her visitors up to the house as soon as they arrived. Leia had been frantically running around the neighborhood looking for her, and was just returning home when they turned the corner. Mama had wandered away while Leia was out back feeding the chickens. Since then, she seemed to be drifting faster and farther away.

  Nori cleared her throat. “Good of Daniel to stop by and examine her. There’s a first for everything,” she said, slicing a loaf of sweetbread into thick pieces.

  “Have you had a chance to sit down and talk to him?” Koji asked.

  Nori paused before answering. “I saw him a few days ago and asked him to check on Mama. Not long, yeah. Other morning he went fishing with the boys, saw a kohola up close. I think it was special for him. For all of them.”

  “A kohola, eh. Good for them. Daniel seem all right to you otherwise?” he asked. “Sounded kind of lost when I saw him at the station last week.”

  Nori stopped slicing the bread and looked up. “There’s something, yeah,” she said matter-of-factly. “But he seemed happy with the boys and with Mama. Maybe he just needs a little time to settle in,” she said. “Mauna Loa has disrupted everyone, yeah, can’t imagine how he must feel returning to all of this.”

  Koji smiled. “You make a good argument there,” he said.

  “Tell that to Samuel,” Nori quipped. She poured more guava juice into his empty glass. “Speak of returning, Maile’s back.”

  Koji sat a moment with the news, a surge of happiness spreading through his chest. “When?”

  “A few days—” But before Nori could finish her sentence, a barrage of excited voices rushed in from the market. “What now?” Nori said, putting down the knife.

  Koji followed her out of the kitchen to find the Yamamoto boy standing amid Samuel and a group of the locals who had gathered by the koa bar.

  “There’s news?” Nori asked, raising her voice above the clamor of the crowd.

  The crowd quieted and the long-limbed boy looked over at them.

  “The Volcano Observatory Center just called down. There’s been another eruption. East of the current lava flow, yeah,” he said eagerly. “The new flow’s moving north toward Saddle Road right above Hilo. They say it’s ponding between an old flow and the cinder cone Pu’uhuluhulu.” The boy paused to take a breath. “They say if it begins to flow again, it’ll be heading directly toward town.”

  There was a rumbling from the crowd, wanting to know more. The boy repeated himself. Koji felt Nori’s eyes on him, but neither of them said a word.

  19

  One Step Forward

  The new eruption above Saddle Road changed everything. Pele now hovered directly over Hilo, biding her time, waiting. Word had spread quickly through the community about a town meeting the next morning. By the time Daniel arrived, the fish market was already overflowing with worried locals, Mrs. Laney, his old high school history teacher, dockworkers, well-dressed haoles he’d never seen before, all pushing into the crowded space. Uncle Samuel’s radio was perched on the counter, broadcasting Civil Defense announcements. Voices buzzed through the room. The screen door whined open and clapped shut. Daniel looked around the packed room, searching for Maile among the crowd. Ever since Mano told him she was back, Daniel looked for her everywhere he went, but she remained elusive. He glanced over at the screen door each time it opened only to be disappointed until Uncle Koji walked in.

  He watched how Koji’s presence settled the room. His mother must have felt the same way when she was with him. It wasn’t until he was ten or eleven that he really understood what Koji and his mother meant to each other. It was the way their looks lingered a moment longer across the room, communicating secrets. By then his father had been gone for almost half of his life. His uncle moved among the crowd and stopped to talk to some of the locals. Through the years, Koji had always been the one there to protect them, comforting them with his steadiness. Daniel smiled, hoping to catch his uncle after the meeting to ask him about Mama Natua seeing him with his father.

  Daniel sat next to Wilson and Mano as Uncle Samuel stood n
ear the back bulletin board along with a tall, pale geologist from the Volcano Observatory Center, who talked about the latest eruption and the eventual lava flow toward Hilo if it didn’t stop. The crowd sat silent and collectively seemed to deflate, slumping in their chairs. Once again, all they could do was wait. Even Auntie Nori seemed out of sorts, keeping quiet and busy by refilling snacks, a serious, thoughtful look on her face as her hands worked quickly from experience.

  A low rumbling of voices murmured through the room.

  “It’s up to Pele like always, yeah,” someone spoke up.

  Uncle Koji added, “It’s not the first time, eh, won’t be the last.”

  “Don’t forget, yeah, Hilo has always stood up to whatever came our way,” Uncle Samuel encouraged.

  One old-timer reminded everyone of the eruption in 1881. “No stopping the lava, yeah. Came oozing down the mountain, splitting into two forks as it flowed into town, snaking through the streets until it stopped dead at Komohana Street, at the intersection of Mohouli and Popolo Streets, as if there were a stop sign. Lucky for us, eh, it ended just a little over a mile from Hilo Bay.”

  The locals laughed and relaxed. Daniel heard the quick hum of agreement. Just like always, the Hilo community had roused themselves out of their gloom. Whatever was going to happen, they’d find a way through it. They had always put their faith in the natural world, along with the deities who ruled each part of it. It was something he’d missed being in the clinical world of medicine, where life and death revolved around hard, cold facts. Daniel turned when he heard the screen door whine open again, only this time he wasn’t disappointed. Maile stole in quickly, her fingers edging the door quietly closed behind her.

  Maile stayed near the front door ready for a quick escape, while Daniel turned and struggled to get a good look at her through the crowd. In high school, she had been thinner and taller than most of the other girls, her waist-long dark hair hanging down and hiding her pretty face as she hovered over a math problem or a book. She was always studious and attentive in school, watching and learning while the other girls were lost in their own noise. It was her quiet intelligence that Daniel found most attractive. Maile was invisible to everyone but him. It wasn’t until their junior year in high school that she’d blossomed over the summer, emerging from her cocoon and returning to school as if she were someone new and mysterious who had just arrived on the island. Suddenly Maile was attracting the attention of all the boys. But it was too late; Daniel was already years ahead of them.

  * * *

  The crowd lingered when the meeting was over. By the time Daniel moved through the throng to where Maile was standing, she was gone. He was just as quickly out of the market, the screen door slapping shut behind him. Daniel finally caught up to her a few blocks away. Heart beating, he watched Maile from a short distance as she stood in front of Oshima’s grocery store, looking down at the wooden crates of starfruit and papayas on display. It was hard to believe that ten years had passed and here they were, still unmarried, while most of their classmates married right out of high school and now had a passel of kids. Maile appeared thinner, her dark hair now shoulder-length, her cheekbones more prominent. Even if Daniel couldn’t see her eyes, there was something sad and forlorn about the way she stood there all alone. And yet, nothing had changed; just the sight of her took his breath away.

  Daniel walked slowly toward her and spoke her name softly, “Maile,” as if they’d been standing next to each other and he wanted to show her something.

  Maile looked up, startled to see him. “Daniel?” she said, glancing nervously around. Her first moments of uncertainty gradually turned to warmth and recognition as they spoke of the eruption, and she smiled as they reminisced about their high school days together.

  “You didn’t stay in Chicago?” she asked.

  Daniel expected the question, shuffled through the answers he could give her, and chose what was close to the truth. “Something unexpected happened to bring me back home. How about you?”

  Maile squinted against the sunlight. “Me too,” she said.

  They walked from Oshima’s down to the wharf, the years between them disappearing, the salt-fish air blowing away all the sulfur scents as he pointed out the Okawa & Sons fishing boat berthed along the dock, and the new shave ice stall. They caught up with easy conversation that floated comfortably to the surface. Daniel had spent the past ten years moving at a frantic pace, always trying to be the best until he wasn’t. With Maile, he felt calm for the first time in a long while—she shared his history and his community. She knew his strengths and his weaknesses. With Maile he had nothing to prove.

  After they parted, Daniel walked back to the green bungalow, replaying their moments together. Maile was both the girl he once knew and the woman he knew nothing about. The girl had been shy but always at ease, while this Maile was hesitant, overly cautious. It was just one more mystery he had to untangle.

  * * *

  Daniel woke the next morning filled with energy, a buzz racing through his veins at the thought of seeing Maile again. He left the house early, not willing to wait and worry about when the lava would begin to flow toward Hilo. Instead he kept busy by borrowing Uncle Samuel’s truck and driving to Hilo Hospital to arrange for Mama Natua to take some tests. He hadn’t been back to the hospital since his mother returned home for the last time. Daniel turned down the paved road that led to the gray, three-story concrete building, now L-shaped with the addition of a new children’s wing two years ago. Auntie Nori said it had been funded by a rich sugar plantation owner whose son had been treated at the hospital for dengue fever. Daniel knew it was the closest most locals would come to know the wealth garnered by the sugar plantations, but it was good to see that some of the owners were giving back to the community.

  As soon as Daniel entered the busy hospital, the life he had left behind rose before him. The hospital was tiny compared to the large, frenzied, nonstop world of Chicago Medical Center. Still, the similarities were there—the sharp, insistent smell of alcohol and antiseptic, the anxious voices of people pushing for information, the crowded waiting room filled with the worried and the restless. The coughing, sneezing, moaning sounds of the sick brought Daniel right back to those long, sleepless hours of his internship and the hectic years of his residency. Several fans spun the warm air above the reception area as he waited to speak to the nurse behind the desk. Daniel began to sweat, dizzy from the heat and the noise, along with the shameful reminder that it was the first morning in months that the little girl hadn’t haunted his thoughts from the moment he woke. Before Daniel left Chicago, he wanted to visit the little girl, but instead stood outside her hospital room door and couldn’t bring himself to enter when he heard murmuring voices, someone singing a nursery rhyme in which he recognized the melody but couldn’t make out the words. What kind of doctor was he, unable to face up to his own mistake? He closed his eyes and swallowed the sourness rising up to his throat. He didn’t want his mistake to become a rash that would never go away, so it became just one more reason to leave rather than cause any more problems for the hospital.

  “You okay?” the nurse seated behind the front desk asked.

  Daniel opened his eyes again, saw her questioning gaze as he stepped forward, then saw past her to the glint of the shiny chair in the hallway behind her.

  * * *

  By the time Daniel left Hilo Hospital, he’d been able to accomplish much more than he had hoped for. His first moments there were focused on trying to catch his anxious breaths and breathe normally so he wouldn’t faint. But as soon as he saw the wheelchair in the hallway, he began to focus again, knowing it was exactly what Mama needed. He’d been able to bypass the bureaucracy, not only by telling the administrator he was a mainland-trained local boy who was returning to open his own practice—a lie that came to him too quickly to be completely false; but also because the wheelchair was for his patient, Mama Natua, who was beloved by the community.

  Daniel lift
ed the wheelchair into the bed of the truck, tying it securely to each side, happy that he’d been able to get the chair so quickly. It was the first of many steps in helping Mama regain some mobility, allowing her to get out of her dark room and to sit in the kitchen or the porch or outside in the warm sunlight. And with the ongoing eruption always threatening, it would be essential to her evacuation. Daniel drove slowly over the rutted roads as the wheelchair bounced and rattled all the way back to the Natua house.

  Auntie Leia was surprised to find him tapping on the screen door. “Can’t remember the last time someone knocked,” she said. “Neighbor kids usually walk right in, thinking they’re at home, yeah. The day Nori wandered in, I gained a second sister,” Leia rattled on.

  Daniel smiled. Nori’s temperament had always been much closer to Leia’s. He guessed having a much younger sister as lively and impulsive as Auntie Noelani could be trying. Noelani had run off to Honolulu and eloped at seventeen, only to return divorced by twenty, and was currently a widow after the death of her third husband. Auntie Leia had been the quiet and steady Hilo Auntie, the one who saw the most and said the least. She always seemed happiest stringing leis with her mother, though he wondered now if she ever wanted more when she was young. Daniel heard that the Natua lei business had grown twofold in the past years, Leia’s business skills and intricate stringing praised with the same respect and admiration that was given to Mama.

  “Mama always liked a full house,” he said.

  “Come in, come in.” Auntie Leia pushed open the screen door. “Mama just finished her breakfast.”

  “How is she?” Daniel asked.